Bean rolled over and breathed into the rug. She might smother. If she smothered, her parents would feel really bad. Bean picked some rug fuzz out of her mouth. She knew she wasn’t going to smother. She also knew that Nancy wasn’t going to tie her up and stuff her in the attic. Neither of those things was the problem. The problem was Nancy being her babysitter. That meant that Nancy was the grown-up, the one who got to decide everything. And it meant that Bean was the little, boring, poopy baby who didn’t get to decide anything.
Bean couldn’t stand it anymore. She got up.
“Where are you going?” asked Nancy, looking over her magazine. “You’re not supposed to go out.”
“What is this—jail?!” huffed Bean. “I’m not a criminal, you know. I can go in the front yard!”
“If you do, I’ll tell, and you’ll get grounded for a week,” said Nancy calmly.
Bean pressed her hands against her cheeks, rolled her eyes back in her head, and opened her mouth as wide as it would go. But Nancy wasn’t even looking.
Bean stomped up the stairs as loudly as she could. Nancy didn’t say anything. Bean slammed the door to her room. She waited. Nothing. Stupid Nancy.
She flung herself down on her bed. She was a prisoner in her own home. Treated like a criminal by her own flesh and blood. “By my own flesh and blood,” muttered Bean. It sounded good.
After a few minutes, she stopped being mad and started being bored. She looked around her room for something to do. She could knit. Except that she liked the idea of knitting more than she liked knitting in real life. Besides, her yarn was in a big knot. She thought about painting, but her watercolors were all the way downstairs. She could make a potholder, but she had already made about thirty of them, and the only colors left were brown and gray. Bean’s grandmother loved everything she made, but Bean didn’t think even her grandmother would want a brown and gray potholder.
Bean flopped into her basket chair. Ouch. She got up and looked out her window. She had never been so bored in her life. She squeezed all the way to the edge of the window and found out that she could see Sophie W.’s yard.
The mound of dirt was smaller than it had been in the beginning. There was muddy water running down the driveway and into the street. Bean pressed her eyebrow against the glass. Sophie S. had the hose. She was shooting water straight into the sky. Ivy was off to one side, hunched over a pile of rocks.
Bean frowned. Some friend. She should sense that Bean was in trouble. She should feel it in her bones. Ivy picked up a rock and splatted it down in the mud. Bean squinted and saw that Ivy’s lips were moving. She was talking to herself. For some reason, that made Bean feel better. Ivy wasn’t really having a great time with the other kids. Ivy was just playing by herself. In fact, Ivy was probably missing her right this minute.
Bean tapped her fingers against the window, thinking. Ivy would come to her rescue if she knew that Bean was imprisoned. Bean was sure of it. Somehow, Bean had to let Ivy know what was going on. Then Ivy could help her escape. Hey! Wait a minute! Bean felt an idea landing in her brain like an airplane. An escape! She was in jail, but maybe she could escape. She had heard of prisoners digging tunnels under their jail cells. Too bad her room was upstairs. If she dug a tunnel, she’d fall right into the kitchen.
Then she looked at the window—that would work! Bean pictured herself climbing out the window on a rope ladder. She pictured Ivy hiding in the bushes below, waiting to help Bean to freedom. A rope ladder. A daring escape. Cool!
THE UNDERSHIRT OF FREEDOM
Bean needed some rope, and she needed something to tie it to. But the first thing she needed was Ivy. Bean looked out the window again. Ivy was dropping another rock into mud. Splat. Her lips were still moving. How was Bean going to get her attention? If she screamed out the window, Nancy would hear. Smoke signals would be perfect, but Bean’s mother always said that if Bean used matches, she would live to regret it.
Then Bean remembered a movie she’d seen when she was little. In it, a bunch of raggedy people on an island had waved a flag printed with the letters SOS. Then an airplane had come to rescue them. Bean’s mother explained that SOS stood for “Save Our Souls.” People write it on flags when they want to be saved— after a shipwreck, for example. Bean didn’t see why they didn’t write SM, for “Save Me,” but she wrote SOS anyway. She wrote it on an old undershirt. Then she taped the undershirt to her flagpole. Okay, it wasn’t really a flagpole. It was a long silver pole with a hooked end that opened the window in the bathroom ceiling. It was much taller than Bean, and she wasn’t supposed to play with it.
“But this is an emergency,” Bean said to herself.
Bean rattled the screen on her window until it fell off. Unfortunately, it fell out the window into the front yard, but there was nothing Bean could do about that. Being extra careful not to smack the pole against the glass, Bean edged her flag over the windowsill. Her SOS undershirt fluttered in the breeze. You’d have to be blind not to notice it.
Hey! There was Ivy, walking along the sidewalk! She was going home! She was about to walk right in front of Bean’s house! Bean could have called out, but she had gone to all that trouble, making an SOS flag. She didn’t want to waste it. She waved the flag gently back and forth.
Ivy didn’t notice.
Bean waved the flag up and down.
Ivy just walked along.
Bean jerked the flag in and out.
Ivy didn’t look up.
So Bean threw the pole at her.
It landed with a terrible crash at Ivy’s feet. Ivy squeaked and jumped backward. Then she looked up at the sky. “Wow,” she said. She bent down to touch the pole. “An alien.”
“It’s not an alien! It’s an SOS!” Bean said.
Now Ivy saw her. “Oh. Hi. Did you throw that at me? Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad. Don’t you see the flag part? It’s an SOS. See the letters?”
Ivy looked at the pole again. “Cool.” She came to stand under Bean’s window. “How come you need to be saved?”
“Because of Nancy,” Bean said. “My mom and dad let her babysit me.”
Ivy looked shocked. “She’s not a babysitter. She’s your sister.”
“And she’s getting twenty dollars for it!”
Ivy looked even more shocked. “That’s totally not fair.”
“That’s what I said. But nobody ever listens to me.”
Talking to Ivy, Bean began to see just how unfair it really was. Super-duper unfair.
“Did she lock you in your room?” Ivy asked.
“Well, no,” admitted Bean. “But she won’t let me go outside. I’m a prisoner in my own home.”
“Do you want some food?” asked Ivy. “You could pull it up in a basket.”
“No. I don’t want food. I want freedom,” said Bean dramatically. “I’m going to escape down a rope ladder.”
“Neat-o,” said Ivy. “Can I help?”
“Do you have any rope?” asked Bean.
“For sure! I’ll go get some!” Ivy whirled around, ready to run.
“Wait!” Bean said. “Listen. I’m going to have to sneak you in.” Of course, her mother had said that Ivy could come over, but it was much more fun to sneak. It seemed more like a real jail that way. “So come around to the back door when you’ve got the rope.”
“Okay! I’ll meow like a cat. That’s how you’ll know it’s me.” Ivy gave a little hop.
Bean nodded. “Okay. And then we’ll have to find a way to get past Nancy.”
Ivy was already running toward her house.
WHERE ARE YOU, MISS PEPPY-PANTS?
Bean was a spy. Pressing her back against the wall, she moved down the hall without making a sound. It was harder to be a spy on the stairs because the handrail poked her in the back. Still, she was pretty quiet.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she edged silently toward the living room and peeked around the door. But Nancy wasn’t there. Hmm. Maybe the kitchen.
She slithered toward the door. Empty. Where was Nancy? Bean got a little bit of a funny feeling. What if Nancy was gone? “Nancy?” she said softly.
There was no answer.
“Nancy?” she said in a regular voice. Nothing. “Nancy?”
“I’m in here.” Nancy was in the bathroom. “Don’t come in.”
Bean went down the hall and stood outside the bathroom door. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing. None of your business. Don’t come in.” Nancy’s voice was tight. She didn’t sound like a camp counselor anymore.
“Are you going to throw up?” Bean asked sympathetically. She knew what that was like.
“No! Go away!” Nancy clicked the lock on the door.
What happened to Miss Peppy-Pants? wondered Bean. What was Nancy doing in there? Quietly Bean pressed her ear to the door. She could hear water running, but she could also hear other sounds. Click. Click. Rattle.
“Bean? Is that you?” said Nancy from inside the bathroom.
Bean didn’t say anything. She was perfectly quiet.
Click. Swish. Spray. The sound of a glass bottle being put down.
All of a sudden, Bean knew. This bathroom was where Bean’s mom kept her makeup. Nancy was not supposed to mess around with her mother’s makeup. Bean’s mother had told Nancy about a thousand times that she was too young to wear makeup. Nancy always said that everyone wore it. Then Bean’s mom said that if everyone put their head in the fire, that still wouldn’t make it a good idea. Then Nancy usually cried. They had this conversation a lot.
Now Nancy was in the bathroom putting on makeup.
Some babysitter. She was supposed to be keeping Bean safe and good, and instead she was in the bathroom being bad herself. Bean was just about to point this out when she heard a squeaky meow on the back porch.
Ivy had arrived. Since Nancy was locked in the bathroom, she probably couldn’t hear Ivy come in. But they sneaked anyway. Ivy took off her shoes, and they slid silently across the kitchen and through the hall. Without a word, they tiptoed upstairs and into Bean’s room, closing the door behind them.
“Well?” said Bean. “Did you get the rope?”
“Sort of,” said Ivy. She looked worried. “It’s not exactly rope.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a bundle of string. It was thick string, but it was definitely string.
They both stared at it.
“It was all I could find,” Ivy said.
“I guess I could try it,” said Bean. But she knew she wouldn’t. It was string. If she made a ladder out of it, it would snap in two, and she would plunge to the ground and break both her legs. Dang. A perfectly good idea down the drain.
“We could throw your mattress out the window and then try to land on it,” Ivy suggested.
“We’d miss,” said Bean gloomily.
They were quiet for a minute.
“Where is Nancy, anyway?” asked Ivy.
“She’s in the bathroom,”said Bean.
“She’s putting on my mom’s makeup.” Bean flopped down on her bed and looked at the ceiling. “She told me to go away.”
“My babysitters aren’t allowed to do that,” said Ivy. “They’re supposed to play with me, even though I usually don’t want them to.”
“Oh, she’s only doing it because my mom’s not here,” said Bean. “My mom doesn’t let her wear makeup.”
“Gee. Nancy’s pretty sneaky,” said Ivy.
“Yeah. I bet she’s been planning it for a million years. The second my mom leaves— boom! She’s in the bathroom rubbing eye shadow all over her face.”
“That’s stupid. Eye shadow’s goony,” said Ivy.
“Yeah. If I could do anything I wanted, it wouldn’t be dumb old eye shadow,” said Bean.
“What would you do?” asked Ivy.
“Easy. I’d go in the attic.”
“You have an attic?” asked Ivy.
“Yeah, but I’ve never been in it. My parents won’t let me up there,” said Bean. “They say it’s not really an attic and there’s nothing up there and it’s too dangerous.”
There was a pause.
“Bean?”
“What?”
“Your parents aren’t here.”
Bean sat up. She pictured the attic, dark, unknown, secret. “If they aren’t here, they can’t say no!”
“And Nancy did tell you to go away,” added Ivy.
“The attic is definitely away.” said Bean.
Ivy smiled. “She practically ordered us to go there. Come on!”
THE DOOR IN THE CEILING
There was no reason, Bean told herself, why Nancy should have a good day while she had a bad one. She had been waiting her whole entire life to see the attic. “And besides,” she whispered to Ivy as they tiptoed down the hall, “if there’s nothing up there, how can it be dangerous?”
“Exactly,” whispered Ivy. “Where are the stairs?”
“There aren’t any stairs,” said Bean. She opened the hall closet. “We go this way.” She closed the door behind them and pointed at the ceiling. “See?”
Ivy looked up, up the shelves of sheets and towels to a square wooden door set in the closet ceiling.
“My mom says it’s not an attic,” Bean said. “She calls it a crawl space.”
“Crawl space,” said Ivy. “Sounds like something’s crawling around up there. Like a monster with slimy arms that drip down to the floor.”
Bean didn’t like the sound of that. “My mom says there’s nothing up there.”
“Well of course she’d say that,” Ivy said. “Parents never want you to know anything.”
“It’s my house,” Bean said. “I should know what’s in it.” She looked up to the door in the ceiling. “Maybe there’s another kid up there.”
“Or some old dolls,” said Ivy.
Bean wiggled with excitement. “There could be anything! Let’s get going!” She put her foot on the first shelf. It wasn’t as sturdy as she expected. It bent in the middle. She gripped the shelf above—the one that held a lot of washcloths—and pulled herself up. It was harder to hang on to a shelf than a tree branch. Shelves were too smooth. She climbed one shelf higher. Hello, wrapping paper. She tried not to step on the fancy white tablecloth, but she did, just a little. Another shelf. Ugly green towels she had never seen before.
Bean looked up. The wooden square was getting closer. She looked down. The floor was far away. Ivy waved. “You’re doing great.”
“Aren’t you coming?” asked Bean.
“Oh. Sure.” Ivy stepped onto the bottom shelf. “Gosh. It bends.” She took a deep breath, caught hold of the washcloth shelf, and pulled herself up. “You guys have a lot of towels.”
“Uh,” Bean grunted. She was concentrating. She climbed past a bowl of fake fruit and bonked her head on the ceiling. “Ow.” Holding on to the shelf as tight as she could, she looked up. The door to the attic wasn’t really a door. It was a square of wood in a frame. It didn’t have a handle or hinges or anything.
Bean leaned out, trying not to look down, and pushed against the wood square with her hand. Nothing happened.
“What’s going on up there?” said Ivy.
“Can’t get it open,” Bean puffed.
“Scooch over.” Now Ivy was leaning out, too. “We’ll push at the same time. One.”
“Two,” they said together.
“Three!” They bashed the wooden square as hard as they could.
The door leaped upward and thumped down somewhere in the darkness above them. From the open hole, black, lumpy dirt rained down on Bean and Ivy and all the towels and sheets in the closet.
Bean began to cough. “What is this stuff?”
Ivy was trying to blink the dirt out of her eyes. “Your parents probably put it there to stop us. Like they use poisonous snakes to guard treasure.”
“Dirt won’t stop us,” Bean said. “We like dirt!”
“Nothing will stop us!” said Ivy.
Bean r
eached out and grabbed the edge of the opening. A pile of dirt fell on her face. She ignored it. With her feet, she pushed herself up until her top half was inside the attic.
There was a silence.
“Well?” said Ivy.
“I think we’re the first people who have ever been in here,” said Bean.
“Really? What does it look like?”
Bean’s voice echoed from above. “Well, it’s empty, and there are lots of boards poking up sideways from the floor. It’s not very tall. There are little window things on each side. It’s kind of mysterious. It’s …”
“It’s what?” asked Ivy
There was a pause. “It’s our own private little house.”
“Hang on!” Ivy called. “Here I come.”
UH-OH
“They’ll never figure it out. Not in a million years,” Bean was saying. “We’ll just disappear and then—ta-da!—we’ll come back a few hours later, and they’ll have no idea where we’ve been.” She put the door back into its hole and turned to Ivy. “It’ll be our secret fort.”
Ivy was moving into the shadows. “We’ll fix it up so it’s all comfy and cozy. With silk curtains and rugs and poofy pillows.”
Bean walked carefully across the boards. “Right over here we could put a little stove, so we could make hot chocolate,” Bean said. “We could have a cat, too. And maybe one of those tiny monkeys.”
“We could get beds and have secret sleepovers,” Ivy went on. Her mother didn’t let her have sleepovers yet. “I could sneak out of my house and come over here—”
“And I’ll tie a string to my toe and dangle the string out the window. You pull on the string to wake me up, and I’ll let you in, and we’ll come up here. Oh, I know! Instead of beds, we could put up hammocks, like a ship.” Bean hugged herself. It was such a great idea. “And they’ll never know. They’ll say, ‘Where have you been?’ and we’ll say, ‘Us? We were right here.’ And it won’t be a lie!”
Ivy & Bean Bundle, Books 4 - 6 Page 2